Anarchic Culture

I can't resist (I suppose) just one or two more ... .

Just finished reading Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold. I'll have more to say about the book itself in another post, but what I want to bring up now is how I read it.

I used the Oxford World's Classics edition, around $15 in a nice, coat-pocketable paperback.

Though I posted "The Top Ten" and re-named this blog The Instauration to mark Apple including a Kindle application for its iPad, I prefer books. This is why:

When first I brought Culture and Anarchy home, I looked it over. My perusal included the cover artwork, the back cover "blurb", the table of contents, and the length of each section.

After skimming a couple of paragraphs here and there, I saw that Culture and Anarchy was less about literature and more about social commentary. I was afraid the book would be boring, so I set it aside for awhile but left it within arm's length of my reading chair.

When I decided to read it anyway a week or so later, I thought I would try a different approach in case Culture and Anarchy turned out to be as dry as it first looked.

I started by reading the Appendix (which is a response to an early version of Arnold's first chapter by philosopher/critic Henry Sidgwick), then I read the text of Culture and Anarchy at my normal snail's crawl.

After that, I read Arnold's Preface to the book. Then I read editor Jane Garnett's Introduction.

This procedure worked out for me: Sidgwick's critique provided me the introduction I needed, and the text turned out to be (for a Victorian essay, anyway) very funny and engaging without any more background than the Appendix and Garnett's Explanatory Notes (an education in themselves) provided.

Arnold (something I found out while reading Garnett's Introduction) wrote the Preface after he collected all five chapters (which first appeared in a Victorian high culture periodical of his day) into one book, so I actually found it worthwhile to read that part almost last.

A book makes the method I used very easy. I doubt it would have even occurred to me to do it that way on an electronic reader (hard or soft), and it probably would have been hard to do if it had. (Note: If you try my method on Culture and Anarchy, please do what I didn't, and read "Note on the Text" before reading the actual text. That should help.)

Also, I can also stick one book in the chair's cushion while I have another in my lap, if I need that kind of cross-reference. Ditto for the e-reader version, unless you have a lot more money than I'm ever likely to have.

When I first wrote about an electronic library some years ago (in another blog on another service), I thought it would be great to have it as a way to borrow books from an electronic repository (an e-library -- something public and local) or look at entire collections (like the eleven-volume edition of Arnold's complete works that Garnett frequently references in her notes), books I would never have the funds to buy myself or the room to store (or ever need to own in the first place).

I think books have their place. I need them, for one thing. An e-reader (hard or soft) would be for me a nice luxury. While not essential for me now, it might be someday -- especially in some public e-library form.

I also like owning hard copies of things like books and music. I think it just makes sense. So I hope both books and CDs stick around, personally. And I hope e-readers (hard and soft) continue to develop along paths that benefit the general public.

Maybe we'd have a little less anarchy that way -- and a little more culture we can share.

_____

Afternote (2/25/11): A recent episode of a popular TV show evaluating "attic" curios and "garage sale" antiques, a recent news report on the impending death of the small bookshop and a recent effort at "rolling my own" have one thing in common: a brainstorm.

It seems persons of wealth once collected books in loose-page form, each book held in a custom box made from the same type of "board" that makes hard-backed books hard -- bookboard. In the box also went items like related etchings, maps and other materials that could one day, when the collected book was "finished," be sent back to the bookseller to be custom bound. That way, the book would not only be a first edition, it would also be one of a kind. The antiques show featured one such collection, still held loose in those little fold-out boxes.

The news report detailed the rise of electronic books, the purchase of each said to be a "nail in the coffin" of the indie bookseller.

My custom-book follies include me trying to impersonate someone who knows what he is doing in taking electronic text I wrote into booklet form with a garden-variety printer and word-processing software. The result was a ridiculous and lamentable waste of paper.

So today, a brainstorm: "Why not ____ ?"

I think you can fill in the blank. (Hint: the answer would not be "better software," at least not for a book lover like me.)